Deep Wizardry-wiz 2 Read Free Page B

keel over. Nita had to lock her knees to keep standing. But both of them managed to stay upright until the weakness passed, and Nita looked around with grim satisfaction at the empty water. “The sharks won’t be bothering us now,” she said. “Let’s get up on the sandbar.”
    It was a few seconds’ walk to where the dolphins lay beached on the bar, chattering excitedly. Once up on the sand, Kit took a look at what awaited them and groaned out loud. Nita would have too, except that she found herself busy breathing deep to keep from throwing up. Everywhere the sand was black and sticky with gobs and splatters of blood, some clotted, some fresh.
    The dark bulk of the injured whale heaved up and down with her breathing, while small weak whistling noises went in and out. The whale’s skin was marked with rope burns and little pits and ragged gashes of shark bites. The greatest wound, though, the one still leaking blood, was too large for any shark to have made. It was a crater in the whale’s left side, behind the long swimming fin; a crater easily three feet wide, ragged with ripped flesh. The whale’s one visible eye, turned up to the moonlight, watched Kit and Nita dully as they came.
    “What happened?” Kit said, looking at the biggest wound with disbelief and horror. “It looks like somebody bombed you.”
    “Someone did,” the whale said in a long pained whistle. Nita came up beside the whale’s head and laid a hand on the black skin behind her eye. It was very hot. “It was one of the new killing-spears,” the whale said to Nita, “the kind that blasts. But never mind that. What did you do with the sharks?”
    “Sank them. They’re lying on the bottom with a ‘freeze’ on them.”
    “But if they don’t swim, they can’t breathe—they’ll die!” The concern in the whale’s voice astonished Nita. “Cousins, quick, kill the spell! We’re going to need their good will later.”
    Nita glanced at Kit, who was still staring at the wound with a tight, angry look on his face. He glanced up at her. “Huh? Oh. Sure. Better put up a wizard’s wall first, so that the dolphins can get back in the water without getting attacked again.”           
    “Right.” Nita got her book out and riffled through pages to the appropriate spell, a short-term forcefield that needed no extra supplies to produce She said the spell and felt it take hold, then sagged back against the whale and closed her eyes till the dizziness went away. Off to one side she heard Kit saying the words that released the freeze.
    A few moments later fins began appearing again out on the water, circling inward toward the sandbar, then sliding away as if they bumped into something, and circling in again.
    “The water will take the blood away soon enough,” the whale said. “They’ll go away and not even remember why they were here...” The whale’s eye fixed on Nita again. “Thanks for coming so quickly, cousins.”
    “It took us longer than we wanted. I’m Nita. That’s Kit.”
    “I’m S’reee,” the whale said. The name was a hiss and a long, plaintive, upscaling whistle.
    Kit left the wound and came up to join Nita. “It was one of those explosive harpoons, all right,” he said. “But I thought those were supposed to be powerful enough to blow even big whales in two.”
    “They are. Ae’mhnuu died that way, this morning.” S’reee’s whistle was bitter. “He was the Senior Wizard for this whole region of the Plateau. I was studying with him—I was going to be promoted to Advisory soon. Then the ship came, and we were doing a wizardry, we didn’t notice—“
    Nita and Kit looked at each other. They had found out for themselves that a wizard is at his most vulnerable when exercising his strength. “He died right away,” S’reee said. “I took a spear too. But it didn’t explode right away; and the sharks smelled Ae’mhnuu’s blood and a great pack of them showed up to eat. They went into feeding